I can't really work out what the advantages of either term are, they're both marketey and "Post PC" has been toxic since Oracle started spraying it around back in the 90's.

I think the way of defining this era is the era of appliance applications - both in the sense of appliances that can plugin thirdparty code and in the sense of applications being individual sandboxed things that are no more difficult to purchase and install than a packet of Toffos. It's fascinating that the apps - at least the good ones - are highly tailored experiences.

I know games consoles have been doing this forever but this really seems to be spreading to most CE now - apps are available for smartphones, soon to spread to featurephones - TV sets etc. etc, and v. v. soon Windows ironically will get on this bandwagon.

That's why I also like the term "console computing", where apps are akin to the games you got for your console; self contained and focused, for the most part, but still fairly flexible and extensible with DLC.

Where does Siri fit into this world-view? It's a layer that sits atop other services (Yelp, Messages, Weather, etc.), wouldn't function without them (thus isn't "self-contained"), does a variety of different things (thus not focused), yet is clearly Post-PC as I understand the term.

What are you talking about? Where does Google Search fit into it? How about Yahoo Weather? Or Wiki? They are just services and have nothing to do with PC or post-PC ness (in that Siri, Google Search, Yahoo Weather, or Wiki are independent of a PC/Post-PC ness.

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Console computing also doesn't capture the connectedness of Post-PC. 100% of the compute cycles needed to run Super Mario World were on the Super Nintendo's chip. Many of the post-PC apps are no where near as self-contained. What would Foursquare or Facebook or even Maps be without the network.

I would say that focus and self-sufficiency are poor indicators of "post-PCness".

I disagree because you think it's sufficient when I never said it was. You are misinterpreting my statements in this case.

Focus and self sufficiency are necessary but insufficient. In other words, you can install apps onto a PC to "transform" it into a Post-PC device but in of itself those apps are insufficient. You have to actually make the PC much simpler to maintain (self updating for the most part is already just about done), much simpler in organization (such as removing the direct filesystem and presenting apps instead of documents, making document access a part of app function ala iTunes or iPhoto), etc.

In other words, just because a Mac has iTunes and iPhoto doesn't make it post PC; the Mac has to overall function like iTunes/iPhoto (much like Metro on Windows 8) being App centric instead of Document centric, because people know how to use Apps and not Filesystems.

Blah, I'm not being concise enough.

My point is simple though; you are reading my words too narrowly. A console PC device is a computer that turns computing experiences into Apps and computers into appliances. Apps are akin to microwave meals, self contained and easy to use without the extra overhead and complexity found in the tools, instructions, prep and cleanup found when cooking a meal.

Mobiles are taking that particular form of personal granular content consumption from PCs more than they're stealing TV's fixed schedule content consumption.

For years and years PCs couldn't do any of that to begin with. Your online content would be a BBS over a modem or at best CompuServe or AOL/Prodigy if you were US based. PCs don't "own" online content as part of their core identity any more than they "own" watching TV shows. PC utility is always an upward slanting curve it's just now some of the stuff the young'uns think it could always do is being disseminated to other devices as well. And this dissemination is pretty much exclusively in areas where the PC is either a nonstarter or a serious hassle, if you want to read the NYT on a train via an iPad that's great knock yourself out but it doesn't affect the wageslave three seats down who's editing some spreadsheet in Excel on a laptop and has been since the PC starting being feasible on a laptop.

I think you've got my contention backwards. I'm not saying that PCs own watching TV shows. I'm saying that "of the content consumption you do on your PC", one of the hallmarks of that consumption is individualization/immediacy.

Even in the BBS days you could get a lot of the same content on specialty zines that would get mailed to your house (I remember a sci-fi fan fiction reading club I was in had this). But when you dialed up your 2400 baud modem, you were getting that same content a la carte and immediately.

I'm certainly not claiming that consumption and editing a spreadsheet are the same thing. In fact I explicitly broke them out as separate issues just 7 posts up the page.

My point is simple though; you are reading my words too narrowly. A console PC device is a computer that turns computing experiences into Apps and computers into appliances. Apps are akin to microwave meals, self contained and easy to use without the extra overhead and complexity found in the tools, instructions, prep and cleanup found when cooking a meal.

I don't think you're going to find this is a workable definition -- at least, not if you are going for some sort of "bright line" distinction.

The file system seems a particular bugaboo because Apple "sort of" hid it. But, it is still actually there and, AFAICT, actually still shows through, at least somewhat.

What if an Android device did surface the file system explicitly? Does it suddenly cease to be Post PC?

What if some key app arose that was so data centric than (at least when running that app) you had the functional equivalent of a file system? What about Photo Editing even now?

Similarly, I expect that regular PC displays will "grow" touch capabilities even as they probably continue to make mice available. The mouse will be useful when you don't want to stretch your arm out horizontally by the hour, but touch on a screen on a PC will eventually be at least selectively done and quite naturally evolved.

I think a hallmark of this era is going to be blurred distinctions. We must also be careful not to assume that some of the current distinctions will hold. I'm not so sure the file system thing is going to be a "forever" distinction. An eternally app-centered view is something I suspect over the longer haul, especially if we use them for more than looking at movies.

I think you've got my contention backwards. I'm not saying that PCs own watching TV shows. I'm saying that "of the content consumption you do on your PC", one of the hallmarks of that consumption is individualization/immediacy.

Apologies, but again that's just functionality radiating outwards from the PC rather than transferred. Sure there's an upper limit to how long you're awake per day so in that sense it's transferred, but only if you were going to do it on the PC in the first place.

Where does Siri fit into this world-view? It's a layer that sits atop other services (Yelp, Messages, Weather, etc.), wouldn't function without them (thus isn't "self-contained"), does a variety of different things (thus not focused), yet is clearly Post-PC as I understand the term.

What are you talking about? Where does Google Search fit into it? How about Yahoo Weather? Or Wiki? They are just services and have nothing to do with PC or post-PC ness (in that Siri, Google Search, Yahoo Weather, or Wiki are independent of a PC/Post-PC ness.

I think we're arguing over the definition of post-PC ness, and I'm saying that a device is not necessarily post PC if it doesn't connect to services - I think your definition is incomplete. You could have a "document writing" application that would fit all your criteria - focused just on writing, self-sufficient, never breaks, no maintenance necessary, etc. - but I wouldn't consider it Post PC if I had to copy paste out of it to get content from it into an email.

In my definition, ease of use extends to ease of integration with services. By my definition, Share Sheets makes Mountain Lion more post-PC than Lion. iCloud makes everything it touches more Post-PC.

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Console computing also doesn't capture the connectedness of Post-PC. 100% of the compute cycles needed to run Super Mario World were on the Super Nintendo's chip. Many of the post-PC apps are no where near as self-contained. What would Foursquare or Facebook or even Maps be without the network.

I would say that focus and self-sufficiency are poor indicators of "post-PCness".

I disagree because you think it's sufficient when I never said it was. You are misinterpreting my statements in this case.

Focus and self sufficiency are necessary but insufficient. In other words, you can install apps onto a PC to "transform" it into a Post-PC device but in of itself those apps are insufficient. You have to actually make the PC much simpler to maintain (self updating for the most part is already just about done), much simpler in organization (such as removing the direct filesystem and presenting apps instead of documents, making document access a part of app function ala iTunes or iPhoto), etc.

In other words, just because a Mac has iTunes and iPhoto doesn't make it post PC; the Mac has to overall function like iTunes/iPhoto (much like Metro on Windows 8) being App centric instead of Document centric, because people know how to use Apps and not Filesystems.

Blah, I'm not being concise enough.

My point is simple though; you are reading my words too narrowly. A console PC device is a computer that turns computing experiences into Apps and computers into appliances. Apps are akin to microwave meals, self contained and easy to use without the extra overhead and complexity found in the tools, instructions, prep and cleanup found when cooking a meal.

I get where you're going, but I think the definition is incomplete without explicitly mentioning the sharing/services side of things. A post-PC device isn't a Post-PC device if it can't share and access services.

I think you've got my contention backwards. I'm not saying that PCs own watching TV shows. I'm saying that "of the content consumption you do on your PC", one of the hallmarks of that consumption is individualization/immediacy.

Apologies, but again that's just functionality radiating outwards from the PC rather than transferred. Sure there's an upper limit to how long you're awake per day so in that sense it's transferred, but only if you were going to do it on the PC in the first place.

It's transferred for me personally in that time I used to spend on NYTimes.com is now spent in Flipboard. My Flipboard time isn't stealing my "reading the physical paper" time, because I wasn't doing that to begin with. Similarly, my Netflix watching on my laptop time is now my Netflix watching on my iPad time (when I'm on the road I no longer carry my laptop). Netflix on my iPad isn't taking the place of OTA TV, because I haven't owned one of those in years.

A post PC device is anything where you compute on that isn't a PC; so FaceBook on a phone makes the phone a post PC device. Gaming on a 3DS makes the 3DS a post PC device. Siri on an iPad makes the iPad a post PC device.

However, the term console PC then is an extension of the example of "Gaming on a 3DS", because prior to coining the term "Post PC" there existed an entire generation of devices that exemplified the trend and I think deserves the title more than "post PC" or "PC plus".

The aspects of console gaming that separate it from PC:1) Apps and not Data (you play Halo, you visit Netflix, you load the Photos app, you aren't loading Halo savedata, you aren't opening a movie catalog file, you aren't opening an index of sorted and organized photos in multiple subdirectories)2) Apps are bundled (much like bundles on OS X) and not files; the distinction is you click on TurboTax.app and not TurboTax.exe inside of c:\Program Files\Intuit\TurboTax\TurboTax 20113) Apps are presented first (part of the Apps not Data point), so you see a list of Apps and not a filesystem where you have to find c:\Program Files\Intuit\TurboTax\TurboTax 2011\TurboTax.exe. PCs already have some of this with the Start Menu, but not enough that the Start Menu actually replaces the File System

@wrylachan: The sharing of services doesn't define a post PC device because a PC can also access those services.

So? PC's can also have file bundles. PCs can also have their data in the application - see games. PCs can also have tightly focused apps - see file zippers, etc.

None of the individual criteria you're suggesting are impossible on a PC. What makes post-PCs different is A) that the system is set up to only allow those usage patterns, and B) the user expectation is influenced by that - i.e. while I might go looking for my iPhoto Mac photos in the finder, I'm not going to bother in iOS because I'm conditioned to know that on iOS there isn't a file browser separate from iPhoto. And c) that all the individual criteria, collectively add up to a user experience whose whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

I don't see how you get to C without sharing. When I think of all the appliance-like apps, how many of them would be useless without backend services? Tons. Would people be buying the devices on the merits of their "applianceness" if they didn't play well with others? No. You don't get a Post-PC experience on a non-sharing device even if all the other elements are there.

Here's the thing - ease of use includes ease of sharing. You can't have a definition that namedrops ease of use and not talk about connectivity and sharing.

A post PC device is anything where you compute on that isn't a PC; so FaceBook on a phone makes the phone a post PC device. Gaming on a 3DS makes the 3DS a post PC device. Siri on an iPad makes the iPad a post PC device.

This is a tough one.

How does my Android phone fit in there?

It is a "PC" in my hand. I have a file browser and access to shares on my PCs. I have a hard keyboard and arrow keys. (and I use them all, often, i'd be pretty frustrated without them).

It's not really "post-PC" in any sense other than it's not Windows or Mac OS, and it doesn't use a mouse.

Oh, and, I guess it's post PC in the sense that I'm forced to view gimped content by default until I can figure out how to access the desktop browser site.

But other than that, it's not like an iPhone or an iPad in the walled garden, paradigm shift sense.

I can't really work out what the advantages of either term are, they're both marketey and "Post PC" has been toxic since Oracle started spraying it around back in the 90's.

I think the way of defining this era is the era of appliance applications - both in the sense of appliances that can plugin thirdparty code and in the sense of applications being individual sandboxed things that are no more difficult to purchase and install than a packet of Toffos. It's fascinating that the apps - at least the good ones - are highly tailored experiences.

I know games consoles have been doing this forever but this really seems to be spreading to most CE now - apps are available for smartphones, soon to spread to featurephones - TV sets etc. etc, and v. v. soon Windows ironically will get on this bandwagon.

That's why I also like the term "console computing", where apps are akin to the games you got for your console; self contained and focused, for the most part, but still fairly flexible and extensible with DLC.

A post PC device is anything where you compute on that isn't a PC; so FaceBook on a phone makes the phone a post PC device. Gaming on a 3DS makes the 3DS a post PC device. Siri on an iPad makes the iPad a post PC device.

However, the term console PC then is an extension of the example of "Gaming on a 3DS", because prior to coining the term "Post PC" there existed an entire generation of devices that exemplified the trend and I think deserves the title more than "post PC" or "PC plus".

The aspects of console gaming that separate it from PC:1) Apps and not Data (you play Halo, you visit Netflix, you load the Photos app, you aren't loading Halo savedata, you aren't opening a movie catalog file, you aren't opening an index of sorted and organized photos in multiple subdirectories)2) Apps are bundled (much like bundles on OS X) and not files; the distinction is you click on TurboTax.app and not TurboTax.exe inside of c:\Program Files\Intuit\TurboTax\TurboTax 20113) Apps are presented first (part of the Apps not Data point), so you see a list of Apps and not a filesystem where you have to find c:\Program Files\Intuit\TurboTax\TurboTax 2011\TurboTax.exe. PCs already have some of this with the Start Menu, but not enough that the Start Menu actually replaces the File System

Android blurs the lines though.Android has a filesystem, can be data oriented if you want it to, or task oriented. Apps aren't presented first, widgets are.Apps are bundled but there is a filesystem.Since android has 40% of tablets and 55% of smartphones...

I say Post-PC. I think some people here are taking the term too literally. Post-PC doesn't mean that the traditional PC completely goes away; just that the "focus" or primary method of computing is done with post-PC devices. Traditional PCs will obviously still be around for many, many years to come, and I don't think they will ever go away entirely - they will just cease to be as important to "regular" users.

I think it's inevitable if you look at growth rates. The market for traditional PCs is clearly saturated, as growth rates have hovered around stagnant/shrinking. Compare that to Apple selling close to 70 million iPads in only two years. I don't see how you can reasonably argue that there won't come a time, sooner or later, when post-PC devices are more important to people than traditional PCs. That time is here for some people already!

I say Post-PC. I think some people here are taking the term too literally. Post-PC doesn't mean that the traditional PC completely goes away; just that the "focus" or primary method of computing is done with post-PC devices. Traditional PCs will obviously still be around for many, many years to come, and I don't think they will ever go away entirely - they will just cease to be as important to "regular" users.

+++Post-PC it is. You have to keep in mind the way these sort of labels work. Think of Art History for a second. In the Impressionist era, did realistic painting go away? No, of course not. In fact, there were likely a lot more realistic paintings produced during the Impressionist era than impressionistic ones. But the _dynamism_, the excitement, the progress, the vivacity of that era had moved to impressionism. And, in the post-Impressionist era? Impressionism didn't go away, but the dynamism moved to other things.

Similarly, when the PC era began in the late 1970's, mainframes didn't go away. In fact, for the first few years of the PC era, mainframes were a far bigger business than PCs. But the dynamism, the life of the computer industry had significantly shifted.

And then, the post-PC era started a few years ago. Think about where progress has been fast, where headlines have been made, what people have been lining up to buy, what products have changed the way things are done. It's only right about now, in 2012, that the mobile (smartphone+tablet) business has become larger than the PC business. But for a few years now, we've known things were moving in that direction, and the industry (both hardware and software) has been responding accordingly.

Post-PC devices are central right now. They're where the most R&D effort is being spent, where the dynamism is, where people are thinking hard about new and better ways to do things. Sure, the PC industry is still around and still huge (and staying that way), but its dynamism is largely gone (frankly, most of it had disappeared by 1990), it (mostly) ran out of big ideas a long time ago (not saying that can't ever change, of course).

I say Post-PC. I think some people here are taking the term too literally. Post-PC doesn't mean that the traditional PC completely goes away; just that the "focus" or primary method of computing is done with post-PC devices. Traditional PCs will obviously still be around for many, many years to come, and I don't think they will ever go away entirely - they will just cease to be as important to "regular" users.

Well lets look at this way. The simple fact you had to explain what the term means shows how bad the term really is. You say "Mac" or "PC" and everyone knows what you are talking about. You say post-pc and suddenly you redefine PC as an age rather then it's usual definition is

PC Plus isn't the best choice of words, but at least you don't have to define anything

The difference is that you were (hopefully) instructed about those things in junior high school, or college, depending on when you were exposed to that information.

So if we were in the industrial age in the 1800s and are now in the information age in 1980, and some posit we are now in the entertainment age/era of the information age...

Why is it hard to conceive that if the 1970s to the 2000 era was the "PC age" of the information age and that after 2000 until some point in the future we are at a "Post PC age" where PCs no longer define how we interact with information? Game consoles (PS2, GBA), MP3 players (iPods, specifically, and in general), Smartphones (Android, iPhone, Blackberries), Tablets (iPads), etc.

I mean, I like to think I'm pretty avant garde, flexible, and open, what with a house full of computer electronics, networking, etc, and I recognize the fact that since the year 2000 when everything used to be done on a PC (or in my specific case, a PowerBook G4), to music being on my iPod in 2001, to gaming on a PS2 in 2002 and then a GBA in 2003, a lull as I got married and had kids, to watching videos from an iPod in 2006, to browsing the web for hours a day on my iPhone in 2007, to apps+games on an iPad in 2010, to my wife getting her own iPhone in 2012!

Throughout that period our PC usage really has declined to the point that the only reason I use my Mac or ThinkPad (and my wife and kids):Hours a day watching videosAbout an hour a month importing and editing photos from a cameraAbout 4 hours a year doing taxesAbout an hour a month paying bills (and sometimes I do it on my iPad or iPhone)About an 3 hours a week doing schoolwork (and with iWork+iCloud, an equal amount spent on the iPad)

I spend more time, now, downloading patches and SW updates on the Mac and ThinkPad than anything else, now.

On the flip, we spend about as much time on the Wii/AppleTV as watching videos on the Mac. We spend about 5 hours browsing the web on the iPad/iPhones between everyone in the family, daily. We spend about 3 hours playing games on the iPad/iPhones between everyone in the family, daily.

I seriously think this is a pretty reasonable taste of the future, today, that my mother in law won't be buying a new MacBook in five years when she can do her taxes on an iPad (or whatever "post PC" device is available then), nor my wife doing her schoolwork, nor my daughter doing her homework, etc.

And to be clear, I include in the "post PC" category the Windows 8 ARM tablets because they are more like an iPad than a PC. It's an exercise to the reader to decide if a Windows 8 x86 tablet or a Windows 8 ARM "laptop/desktop/AiO" are PCs or not.

The difference is that you were (hopefully) instructed about those things in junior high school, or college, depending on when you were exposed to that information.

And everyone was instructed what a PC means. It sure as hell doesn't mean an era of time.

So put up or shut up. Show me one reference anywhere , that isn't connected to the term post-pc, that shows PC as a unit of time. I don't want any red herrings about post this or post that, no dodging by saying words change, none of the bullshit about applied meaning.

I can only show you by analogy:The Stone Age was not called as such DURING the Stone Age, only by historians to describe it after the fact.

The same then will hold true of the "PC Age" and the "post PC Age" etc.

Do you seriously believe "people" 300k years ago were talking about themselves as in the "Stone Age"?

How about people in the Bronze Age? Iron Age?

It is only recently in the last 3000 (especially when discovering the first known museum!) or so years that we've started describing ourselves as such. The fact that we recognize the rise and fall of empires, epochs, and eras, means we've started labeling them.

I say Post-PC. I think some people here are taking the term too literally. Post-PC doesn't mean that the traditional PC completely goes away; just that the "focus" or primary method of computing is done with post-PC devices. Traditional PCs will obviously still be around for many, many years to come, and I don't think they will ever go away entirely - they will just cease to be as important to "regular" users.

Well lets look at this way. The simple fact you had to explain what the term means shows how bad the term really is. You say "Mac" or "PC" and everyone knows what you are talking about. You say post-pc and suddenly you redefine PC as an age rather then it's usual definition is

"Post-PC" is just a shorthand for "Post-PC Era". Because the "post-" prefix is so often used in the names of eras, it's often not necessary, in context, to explicitly keep the "era".

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PC Plus isn't the best choice of words, but at least you don't have to define anything

It's gut-wrenchingly awful. Do you also think the Bronze Age should be called the "Bronze + Stone Age"? And then the Iron Age should be called the "Iron + Bronze + Stone Age"? It's understood (well, except apparently here on the BF) that what was there in the past hasn't just vanished into the ether. Post-industrial, post-modern, post-impressionist, post-feminist, post-structuralist.... None of these implies that what comes after the "post" is gone from the face of the Earth. Just that the emphasis has moved on, the excitement is elsewhere. Just as it is here in the Post-PC Era.

I have the same question. Why is this such an important and contentious issue?

A better question might be, why post in a thread about it if you're not interested?

AFAICT it's a bit of a touchy issue because some folks get the idea that "Post PC Era" means the end of something they're pretty attached to in various ways. The way to look at it, IMHO, is that all that's still there, it's just that there's also something new, something more. Enjoy it.

"Post-PC" is just a shorthand for "Post-PC Era". Because the "post-" prefix is so often used in the names of eras, it's often not necessary, in context, to explicitly keep the "era".

Only that's flat out 100% wrong. It's never "era" becasue every single "post" is before a special word or shortened version of a term that already means era or the word era is included. Every single example on this thread and every other thread prove this.

Prove me wrong. Find me one single example that disproves what I said. I can guarantee you that you won't be able to. At best you can quote some period of art and then pretend that somehow style and period are the same even though that's simply not the case.

I think we are moving from an age where information was first stored on PCs, then shared between PCs, to being omnipresent across all devices. I've shared this vision with FunkTron before, I believe, and it requires a different paradigm because a file isn't anchored to a folder on a drive; that node is merely a reflection, a shadow, a window into the data and all it's past and future revisions on that device and all devices. MS had a notion of the right idea in treating the FS as a DB, but it extends beyond your PC and onto all computers you own.

That vision is why I believe PCs can be Post PCs; the apps, the files, the data, transcend your computing instance. If your Win8 tablet, your iPhone, your iMac, and your TV can all act like smart terminals to all your apps and data, that is what I think of wrt Post PC. I'm on Ars at home on my iPad, at work on my iPhone or on vacation on my ThinkPad. I can watch Bambi on my AppleTV, my iPod, or my iPad. My computing experience isn't limited or restricted by any device, now, and I want it to be even more like that in the future.

"Post-PC" is just a shorthand for "Post-PC Era". Because the "post-" prefix is so often used in the names of eras, it's often not necessary, in context, to explicitly keep the "era".

Only that's flat out 100% wrong. ...

Sorry, LDM, you don't get to decide how the rest of the world uses language. You may not like that "Post-PC" is used as shorthand for "Post-PC Era" (just as 'post-Impressionist' can be used as a shorthand for 'post-Impressionist era' or 'post-Impressionist period'). But it doesn't change the reality of how the term is used. I was just trying to help clarify that for you, but apparently clarity is not what you're after here. English is a subtle beast, you have to pay attention to context.

And everyone was instructed what a PC means. It sure as hell doesn't mean an era of time.

"Stone" is not a unit of time either. It appears you are unaware that history is, in part, a construction of historians. That especially includes naming which, by definition, is after the fact.

That said, "newspapers are the first draft of history" and they often try to proclaim that we are in "this or that" age and maybe it sticks and maybe it doesn't.

We used to write about "the space age" but that petered out. Had we continued a strong manned space presence (now, as per my proposed version of it, doing Martian colonies by now), we might still be calling it the space age and historians might agree.

As it is, we are likely to call it something else. Or, maybe the landing on the moon, being an event right up there with Columbus, is seized upon 100 years from now by some historian and the name retroactively sticks.

We will be dead before it is settled. Moreover, after Western Civilization finally falls, whomever comes after may invent new names and divisions of today's events.

But, people can and do sense that a division of some sort is coming and that's where Post XXX starts appearing. It isn't just Tim Cook or someone like that.

Many of us knew that computers were changing in a big way when the Apple II came out or perhaps the IBM PC or maybe even the Altair. We didn't write about "Post Mainframe" on that occassion, but we did call them (then) microcomputers after the existing terms "mainframe" and "mini".

Microcomputers is pretty much forgotten as a term, but people were right to think that computing was changing in a big way. "Post" often appears at times like this.

The rest of your post I'm not even going to quote because it's just noise. It has no bearing. We already determined it should be called something and we are arguing about what to call it. Anything else is just waxing poetic and useless to this thread

Ah, but the end-user _chooses_ not to be trusted. Many non-tech-inclined end-users are quite well aware at this point that the combination of too much choice/too much power, with their lack of tech expertise can lead to trouble, or at least cost them time they don't want to spend fiddling with a mobile device.

Similarly, I choose not to be trusted with the plumbing inside the walls of my house. I think this is a wise choice - I don't think it makes me some sort of idiot.

And surely you're aware that Android is the #1 smartphone OS, so open source is arguably much more prevalent in mobile than on the desktop.

I say Post-PC. I think some people here are taking the term too literally. Post-PC doesn't mean that the traditional PC completely goes away; just that the "focus" or primary method of computing is done with post-PC devices. Traditional PCs will obviously still be around for many, many years to come, and I don't think they will ever go away entirely - they will just cease to be as important to "regular" users.

Well lets look at this way. The simple fact you had to explain what the term means shows how bad the term really is. You say "Mac" or "PC" and everyone knows what you are talking about. You say post-pc and suddenly you redefine PC as an age rather then it's usual definition is

PC Plus isn't the best choice of words, but at least you don't have to define anything

Huh? I'm explaining what the term means because I thought the whole point of this thread was a debate over what to call this period of time. I didn't think just saying "Post-PC" with no explanation would be too helpful

The term "PC" itself is what's confusing, since people use it interchangeably to mean "personal computer" or "Windows PC" specifically. When you say "Mac or PC" you're actually muddling the "PC" term since you're using it to mean "Windows PC." In that sense I think "post-PC" is a pretty clear term because it stays true to the actual definition of "PC" (personal computer).